Adding Parking Lots For Business Complex
3306 Ella Needed Parking Lot Work in Some Tight
Tucked just north of The Heights in the Oak Forest area, 3306 Ella sits on a tight strip of small businesses nestled under a set of power lines. It’s not an ideal setting for mobilizing pavement equipment around, but the businesses at 3306 Ella needed additional parking lot capacity, and American Paving was up to the task.
How American Paving Resolved 3306 Ella’s Pavement Problems
The project called for an additional two parking lots, both about 4,000 square feet in area. Both lots were installed directly under low hanging power lines, adding risk to the project. Taking care to ensure all safety precautions were in place before starting, here’s how the crew tackled the first lot:
- Scraped crushed concrete for reuse. The top 2 inches of crushed concrete were removed using a box blade and hauled to the second lot for reuse.
- Install milled asphalt. Asphalt millings were used to replace the crushed concrete, so this layer was installed to a depth of 2 inches.
- Compact the milled asphalt. Once placed, the milled asphalt was compacted using a roller to ensure a stable base for vehicle loading.
On the second lot, the paving crew did the following:
- Scraped soil and rock, then hauled it away. To prepare the site for the second lot, the existing topsoil and aggregate required removal. Specifically, the top six inches of soil and rock were scraped away and hauled to the back of the property.
- Installed crushed concrete. Four inches of crushed concrete were placed to provide a stable base for the lot. Much of this was recovered from the first lot, but an additional 50 tons needed to be imported to finish the job.
- Installed milled asphalt. Two inches of milled asphalt were then placed over the crushed concrete to complete the lot’s layering. This was laid to a depth of two inches.
- Compacted the concrete/asphalt mix. With the crushed concrete and asphalt in place, all that was left was to compact the mix using a roller, thereby imparting the necessary strength and stiffness into the lot.
3306 Ella’s parking lots were not customer-facing lots, so the project’s number one priority was to minimize costs and maximize the lots’ lifespan. The American Paving team managed to accomplish that mission while navigating space and hazard-related challenges.